Black Diamond

elsewhere. His ducks were stirring, waiting for him to toss them their feed from the large bin where he kept the dried corn. From his vegetable garden he took some sprigs of thyme and plucked two leaves from the bay tree and put them by his door before taking Gigi into the familiar woods behind his home.
    It was his best time for reflection, knowing the terrain so well he barely needed to think where he stepped as Gigi darted out to the left and now to the right sniffing furiously. He had the scent of the fox, and Bruno called him back. Once a basset hound had a scent he could track his prey all day. Gigi waited until Bruno approached, and even in the darkness of the trees Bruno knew that his dog would be eyeing him reproachfully, not understanding why he’d been called from his hunter’s duty. Bruno bent and fondled his head and stroked the long ears and murmured encouragements as his dog rubbed the side of his muzzle against Bruno’s leg. If only he could begin to understand women as he understood his dog.
    But that would mean understanding himself and knowing what
he
wanted. What did he expect or hope for from Pamela? She had made it clear that she wanted no permanent relationship and that she insisted on keeping her independence. Bruno had never suggested otherwise, but he knew that she was a woman with whom he could be content. She was considerate and kind, and the cool self-confidence of her public face became wonderfully sensuous in private. There was also the spice of her being foreign. Her French was almostperfect, but her sensibility was altogether different. They did not share the same references to old pop songs and advertising jingles, to the names of old movie stars and the reputations of old politicians.
    Pamela would ask him about the different street names that he took for granted. Why was this street called the Eighteenth of June and that one the Seventh of May? And what was the Dix-huit Brumaire and the Twenty-first of April? He supposed he had absorbed all the dates at school along with the memories that were seared forever into the soul of France: the Massacre of St. Bartholomew and the Voie Sacrée of Verdun, the horn of Roland at Roncesvalles and the siege of La Rochelle, the sun of Austerlitz and Léon Blum’s Front Populaire. He could define them for her, but not the echoes and the sentiments they carried, that core of Frenchness that loved the sound of an accordion and the taste of
andouillettes
.
    But not sharing all that was part of Pamela’s charm, he admitted. It made her just faintly exotic, with a touch of the adventure that Bruno relished in his life. Still, had it been adventure he wanted, then life with Isabelle in Paris and working for the brigadier would have been a great deal more attractive. Isabelle was wonderful and tantalizing and exciting in a way that made him want to match her daring and her pace. But not all the time. He sniffed the cold night air, saw the very first light of dawn, and he knew that he loved these woods and his home and St. Denis and never wanted to leave them.
    He turned back toward his home, taking the long route along the ridge, strangely comforted that his conversation with himself had ended as it had before, with a realization that both women answered to something essential in his own nature. But neither one of them could offer him all that heneeded. He loved Isabelle, but not the life and career she insisted on leading. And he loved Pamela and the country life she represented, and the way she adored this dear corner of France enough to leave her own country for it. She would be a fine woman to settle down with, but she did not want to settle down. And nor, if he were honest with himself, did he—not yet.
    He looked at his cottage and at the roof where he’d already drawn the plans for the
chien assis
, the dormer window that would turn his empty loft into an extra bedroom. Why do that, if not because he had a family in mind someday, children who would sleep in that room and smuggle Gigi or his successor up the stairs to curl up with warmly at night? Children to whom he could leave this house that he had rebuilt, this stretch of land that he had turned into a garden.
    However generous the gesture, there must have been a touch of sadness in Hercule when he drafted the will that, in the absence of a family heir, left his goods to his friends and to charity. Bruno would miss walking through these woods with Hercule, looking for the darting dance